On the way home yesterday, I cranked up one particular tune in the rotation — “Justified and Ancient,” aka “Stand By The JAMs,” which puts Tammy Wynette (!) out in front of British wiseguys The KLF — and the background noise, what with the grooved (but ungroovy) pavement on I-44 west of I-35, managed to conceal the fact that the subwoofer was working overtime and occasionally emitting an untoward BLAT. Okay, lotsa bass. But maybe too much: the program source was ye olde MP3 Walkman, stuffed to within 30 MB of its 4 GB life, and way the hell down in the control hierarchy, there’s a couple of equalizer settings that it took me entirely too long to flatten out. (Sony: Masters of the Inhuman Human Interface.) I hasten to add that I did these corrections after I got home, not while I was at the wheel.

I hadn’t heard any such noises for a while: I did hit the car wash a few days back, but it doesn’t seem like they could have had anything to do with it. (Vacuum up the rear deck? As if.) Or maybe it was just Way Loud.